We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for April.
Looking for additional book recommendations? One of the benefits of subscribing to The Millions is access to our exclusive monthly newsletter in which our venerable staffers let you know what they’re reading right now. Learn more here.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
1.
5 Year Diary
5 months
2.
3.
Her Body and Other Parties
5 months
3.
4.
Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process
6 months
4.
5.
Fire Sermon
4 months
5.
7.
The Immortalists
3 months
6.
9.
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
4 months
7.
8.
Sing, Unburied, Sing
5 months
8.
10.
My Favorite Thing is Monsters
4 months
9.
-
The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath
1 month
10.
-
Frankenstein in Baghdad
1 month
We sent both Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach and Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere to our Hall of Fame this month. It's the second time Egan has attained this honor – her last novel A Visit from the Goon Squad reached the Hall in 2011. Egan joins twelve other authors who've had two works ascend to our Hall of Fame, and if the current pace holds true we can expect her third book to reach some time in 2025. If you're keeping track at home, we've now had thirteen authors send two books to our list; four have sent three; and then David Mitchell has sent four.
The rest of our list shifted up the ranks accordingly. Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties moved from third to second position; John McPhee's Draft No. 4 from fourth to third. You get the idea.
Two very different books fill the open spots on this month's list.
Occupying ninth position is The Recovering, Leslie Jamison's sweeping exploration of addiction and those who grapple with it. The hefty volume was recently hailed by Michael Bourne as "a welcome corrective to the popular image of addiction as a gritty battle for the addict’s soul and recovery as a heroic feat of derring-do." He noted that Jamison's gifts are on display, and that the book "shimmers throughout." However Bourne was not without some criticism. The work could've used more "ruthless editing," and "there is little in The Recovering that wouldn’t be twice as compelling in a book half as long," Bourne wrote.
Ahmed Saadawi's Frankenstein in Baghdad claimed the tenth spot after several months among the near misses. The book, which was translated for English readers by Jonathan Wright, was recently shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize. (While on the topic of honorifics, it had previously made an appearance on Lydia Kiesling's Year in Reading.) In our Great 2018 Book Preview, I looked ahead to Saadawi's latest:
The long-awaited English translation of the winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2014 gives American readers the opportunity to read Saadawi’s haunting, bleak, and darkly comic take on Iraqi life in 2008. Or, as Saadawi himself put it in interview for Arab Lit, he set out to write “the fictional representation of the process of everyone killing everyone.”
This month’s other near misses included: Less, An American Marriage, The Odyssey, The World Goes On, and The Overstory. See Also: Last month's list.
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We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for March.
Looking for additional book recommendations? One of the benefits of subscribing to The Millions is access to our exclusive monthly newsletter in which our venerable staffers let you know what they’re reading right now. Learn more here.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
1.
5 Year Diary
4 months
2.
2.
Manhattan Beach
6 months
3.
3.
Her Body and Other Parties
4 months
4.
4.
Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process
5 months
5.
5.
Fire Sermon
3 months
6.
6.
Little Fires Everywhere
6 months
7.
10.
The Immortalists
2 months
8.
7.
Sing, Unburied, Sing
4 months
9.
8.
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
3 months
10.
9.
My Favorite Thing is Monsters
3 months
This month brought nothing new to our list and the top half remains unchanged. The first six titles from February are also the first six titles for March. Mercifully, titles seven, eight, nine, and ten switched places, which gives me enough material to write at least this single sentence.
Most of this month's near misses carried over from February as well. The lone newcomer is Tayari Jones's An American Marriage. In our Great 2018 Book Preview, our own Nick Ripatrazone observed that, "In our greatest tragedies, there is the feeling of no escape—and when the storytelling is just right, we feel consumed by the heartbreak." He highlighted Jones's "powerful new novel" as an example of this feat, stating that despite the book's tragic turns of plot, its author "makes sure ... we can’t look away."
Next month at least two spots will open up after Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere and Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach graduate to our Hall of Fame. Which books will take their places? Will they be new releases or some of the near misses from our previous lists? There's only one way to find out.
In the meantime, those looking for recommendations on what to read should consider subscribing to our monthly "What We're Reading" round-up, which is sent to Millions supporters. You can learn more about the (extremely affordable!) program over here. In recent months, these round-up emails have featured Hannah Gersen on Future Sex, Iľja Rákoš on Penguin Lost, and yours truly on The Trees The Trees, Shelter, and It to name just a few. The round-ups provide quick, snapshot book recommendations from Millions staffers and special guests which serve as digital recreations of the staff picks shelf stickers at your favorite bookstore. In the past four months, I've added at least a dozen books to my "to read" pile thanks to them.
This month’s other near misses included: The Odyssey, Frankenstein in Baghdad, Belladonna, Don't Save Anything, and An American Marriage. See Also: Last month's list.
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We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for January.
Looking for additional book recommendations? One of the benefits of subscribing to The Millions is access to our exclusive monthly newsletter in which our venerable staffers let you know what they’re reading right now. Learn more here.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
1.
5 Year Diary
2 months
2.
2.
Manhattan Beach
4 months
3.
3.
Her Body and Other Parties
2 months
4.
8.
Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process
3 months
5.
-
Fire Sermon
1 month
6.
6.
The Seventh Function of Language: A Novel
6 months
7.
4.
Sing, Unburied, Sing
2 months
8.
5.
Little Fires Everywhere
4 months
9.
9.
The Changeling
6 months
10.
-
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
1 month
Exit West exits our list this month, following a parabolic stint on our Top Ten: it debuted in 7th position on in July, and later rose to the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd spots in subsequent months before winding up once more in 7th position to close. As Mohsin Hamid's novel buoyed up our list and down again, it earned praise from no fewer than five of our Year in Reading participants: Jamel Brinkley, Michael David Lukas, Heather Scott Partington, Shanthi Sekaran, and Jeff VanderMeer. (That last author also gave a shout out to Belladonna, which is among this month's "near misses.") It also received critical examination from Eli Jelly-Schapiro, who remarked for our site about its author's attempts at "tracing the fissures in human community and global space, and reflecting on the possibility of their transcendence." Jelly-Schapiro continued:
Orbiting earth, Hamid’s novel maps the divides that structure the current global order. But it also charts one necessary future, the advent of what Aimé Césaire called a “humanism made to the measure of the world.”
Now, Hamid's novel is off to our Hall of Fame.
Elsewhere on our list, it seems little has changed. Our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd spots belong to the books which held those spots in December. So, too, do our 6th and 9th spots. Still, some surprises can be found if one looks carefully. Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing somehow dropped three spots a scant two months after it won the National Book Award, which seems odd. Denis Johnson's new collection, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden, finished not long before the author passed away, appeared at the bottom of our list. Meanwhile, Jamie Quatro's Fire Sermon pops up in 5th position, following callouts in not only our Great 2018 Book Preview, but also in four Year in Reading pieces. Our own Hannah Gersen invoked a heavyweight in her praise:
I feel bad for the new fiction I read this year, because I was always comparing it to Proust, and nothing could really stand up to that epic reading experience. However, there was one novel that swept me up with its passion, intelligence, and spiritual reach: Jamie Quatro’s Fire Sermon, which will be published in January 2018. I look forward to reading it again next year.
This month’s other near misses included: The Odyssey, Don't Save Anything, My Absolute Darling, and Belladonna. See Also: Last month's list.
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We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for December.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
-
5 Year Diary
1 month
2.
1.
Manhattan Beach
3 months
3.
-
Her Body and Other Parties
1 month
4.
-
Sing, Unburied, Sing
1 month
5.
6.
Little Fires Everywhere
3 months
6.
5.
The Seventh Function of Language: A Novel
5 months
7.
3.
Exit West
6 months
8.
8.
Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process
2 months
9.
2.
The Changeling
5 months
10.
-
My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
1 month
A Millions first: the top spot this month belongs to a book of blank pages. Is this an indictment of the modern publishing industry? Or are Millions readers a bunch of obsessive diarists who gleefully read Hannah Gersen's Gift Guide for Readers and Writers? I'm thinking the latter because reading Gersen's recommendation has my index finger hovering over the "buy now" button:
The design is unique in that every page represents one day and is divided into five parts, with each part representing one year. So, when you write your entry for Feb 1, you can look back at Feb 1 of the previous year to see what you were doing/writing/reading/thinking/weathering. I think it’s especially useful for writers because if you use the space to track writing and reading projects (as I often do), it’s a great way to gauge your long-term progress.
Elsewhere, there were major shakeups on our list owing to the success of our Year in Reading series, which recently wrapped up. As our series unfolds each year, one or two books become unmissable fixtures on our participants' lists. You can't open a contributor's piece without seeing these books listed. Years ago, such was the case with John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead, which was praised by almost every Millions staffer, including Elizabeth Minkel, Bill Morris, and Garth Risk Hallberg. More recently in 2014, Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation was shouted out by five participants.
This year, that honor belongs to Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties, which skyrocketed into third position this month on the strength of recommendations from six participants – including Louise Erdrich, Lidia Yuknavitch, and Jeff VanderMeer. Maria Machado's story collection is unlike anything else published this year. Her unsettling stories play with form and genre, weaving disparate influences together into unique threads. (One of my favorites in the collection reads like a blend of Susan Minot's "Lust" and Richard Matheson's I Am Legend.) Are these stories horror? Fairy tale? That's an argument for another piece. The takeaway here, as evidenced by our Year in Reading participants and our Millions readers alike is simple: the book is excellent. (Bonus: Carmen Maria Machado shared her own Year In Reading this year, too.)
Another book benefitting from last month's series was Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. Also highlighted by six Year in Reading participants, Ward's novel now holds fourth position on our Top Ten. (Bonus: Jesmyn Ward shared her own Year in Reading this year, too.)
Finally, a note on what's absent. Obviously, no books ascended to our Hall of Fame this month. Instead, the new titles on our list unseated books which hung around the Top Ten for the past few months. Those dropped books include Forest Dark and My Absolute Darling. Next month, will they pull their way back up onto our list? Let's find out soon.
See Also: Last month's list.
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We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for November.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
1.
Manhattan Beach
2 months
2.
5.
The Changeling
4 months
3.
2.
Exit West
5 months
4.
-
Don't Save Anything: Uncollected Essays, Articles, and Profiles
1 month
5.
4.
The Seventh Function of Language: A Novel
4 months
6.
9.
Little Fires Everywhere
2 months
7.
6.
Forest Dark
3 months
8.
-
Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process
1 month
9.
-
The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage
1 month
10.
8.
My Absolute Darling
3 months
Haruki Murakami’s short story collection Men Without Women is off to our Hall of Fame this month. It’s the author’s third title to achieve that feat, so add “Millions readers” to the list of things closely associated with Murakami’s works. (That list also includes spaghetti, cats, The Beatles, and long distance running.) Meanwhile, two titles from last month’s Top Ten list dropped out in November: Autumn by Ali Smith and What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons.
Filling the three open spaces are works by James Salter, John McPhee, and Philip Pullman. Perhaps you've heard of them?
Ninth place this month belongs to Philip Pullman's La Belle Sauvage, the first installment in the author's new Book of Dust trilogy – itself a quasi-prequel/-sequel (it's been called, flatly, an "equel") to the author's His Dark Materials trilogy. In his review for our site, Charles-Adam Foster-Simard wrote that Pullman's latest novel is "more mature" than his earlier trilogy "because it explores psychological darkness."
There are whispers of pedophilia and sex crimes at the fringes of the story, which heightens the sense of danger, and underscores the theme of innocence and experience, which plays an essential role in Pullman’s books.
Checking in one spot up the list in the eight spot is John McPhee's Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process., which our own Iľja Rákoš described as "a primer in the how, the why, the who, and the humor of getting at the story without sacrificing the art." It's also, as Stephen Phillips argues in his review for our site, "a capsule of the charmed status of an elite practitioner during what looks today like a golden era of magazine journalism replete with extended parlays with editors, protracted fact-checking triangulation, and two weeks on a picnic table."
And speaking of the "golden era" of publishing, James Salter's Don't Save Anything holds the fourth spot on this month's list. The book collects, according to Nick Ripatrazone, "Salter’s previously uncollected non-fiction; essays that appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, People, and elsewhere. The book’s title comes from a line from one of Salter’s final interviews: 'You try to put everything you have in a book. That is, don’t save anything for the next one.'"
Next month our list will no doubt be reshaped by our Year in Reading series, which is currently ongoing, and which reliably reorders everyone's "to read" lists every winter.
This month's other near misses included: The Idiot, Sing, Unburied, Sing, and The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake. See Also: Last month's list.
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We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for October.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
-
Manhattan Beach
1 month
2.
3.
Exit West
4 months
3.
4.
Men Without Women: Stories
6 months
4.
6.
The Seventh Function of Language: A Novel
3 months
5.
8.
The Changeling
3 months
6.
5.
Forest Dark
2 months
7.
-
Autumn
1 month
8.
7.
My Absolute Darling
2 months
9.
-
Little Fires Everywhere
1 month
10.
9.
What We Lose
4 months
With Dan Chaon's Ill Will and Omar El Akkad's American War each off to our Hall of Fame, and Elif Batuman's The Idiot dropping off our list, there's room for three newcomers in our October standings - including a new #1.
Atop our list sits Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach, her fifth novel and her first in six years. Its immediate ascension indicates that, evidently, Millions readers were champing at the bit for a follow-up to the author's 2011 Pulitzer-winning A Visit from the Goon Squad. In our Great 2017 Book Preview, Michael Bourne called Manhattan Beach "a noirish historical novel," which like Goon Squad returns to New York City. Yet the similarities seem to end there:
At the Brooklyn Naval Yard, Anna Kerrigan becomes the nation’s first female diver, repairing ships that will help America win World War II. Through a chance encounter, she meets nightclub owner Dexter Styles, who she hopes can help her solve the riddle of her father’s disappearance years before.
Farther down in seventh position we find Ali Smith's Autumn, which Claire Cameron identified as "the first novel in what will be a Seasonal quartet — four stand-alone books, each one named after one of the four seasons." Smith, a Scottish writer, turns her attentions here to "time in the post-Brexit world, specifically Autumn 2016, 'exploring what time is, how we experience it, and the recurring markers in the shapes our lives take.'"
Finally, we welcome Year in Reading alum Celeste Ng to our list. Her second novel, Little Fires Everywhere, occupies the ninth spot. A few months back, our own Tess Malone remarked on how the book "tangles multiple families in a drama of class and race in a Cleveland suburb."
Next month, Haruki Murakami's Men Without Women: Stories will surely graduate to the Hall of Fame, meaning at least one new spot on our list will open. Which book will take its place? Will it be one of the "near misses" below? There's only one way to find out.
This month's other near misses included: Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process, The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, and The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake. See Also: Last month's list.

We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for September.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
1.
Ill Will
6 months
2.
2.
American War
6 months
3.
4.
Exit West
3 months
4.
3.
Men Without Women: Stories
5 months
5.
-
Forest Dark
1 month
6.
7.
The Seventh Function of Language: A Novel
2 months
7.
-
My Absolute Darling
1 month
8.
10.
The Changeling
2 months
9.
6.
What We Lose
3 months
10.
5.
The Idiot
3 months
Minimal shake-ups on this month's list, only two spots opened, and no ascendants to our Hall of Fame, so what on earth is there to talk about? Patterns? The top four books this month have the letter "W" in their titles. What does that mean? The works in fourth, fifth, and sixth position have yellow covers. Is that significant? The mind reels.
In all seriousness, this month marks the entrée of two newcomers, both of whom were spotlit in our Great 2017 Book Preview.
Debuting in the respectable fifth position this month is Nicole Krauss's fourth novel Forest Dark, which "follows the lives of two Americans in Israel in alternating chapters." In his preview for our site, Nick Ripatrazone added context:
Krauss’s novel A History of Love has been rightly praised, but this new book might send people back to her equally intriguing debut, Man Walks into a Room, another investigation of what happens when our lives are radically transformed.
The other newcomer this month is Gabriel Tallent, whose debut novel My Absolute Darling fills our lists seventh spot. In her blurb for our preview, Janet Potter invoked a heavy hitter to sing the book's praise:
The book industry trades in superlatives, but the buzz for this debut novel stands out. To read it is to become an evangelist for it, apparently, and Stephen King says he’ll remember it forever. It’s about 14-year-old Turtle Alveston and her “tortured but charismatic father,” from whom she’s gradually realized she needs to escape, with the help of her one and only friend and an arsenal of survival skills.
This month's other near misses included: The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, The Night Ocean, Little Fires Everywhere, Hillbilly Elegy, and In Praise of Shadows. See Also: Last month's list.

We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for August.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
3.
Ill Will
5 months
2.
2.
American War
5 months
3.
4.
Men Without Women: Stories
4 months
4.
7.
Exit West
2 months
5.
10.
The Idiot
2 months
6.
8.
What We Lose
2 months
7.
-
The Seventh Function of Language: A Novel
1 month
8.
-
The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake
2 months
9.
-
Eileen
2 months
10.
-
The Changeling
1 month
Lots of action this month as our Hall of Fame absorbs three mainstays from the past six months: Lincoln in the Bardo, A Separation, and Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. This marks George Saunders's third entry into the Hall of Fame. He'd previously reached those hallowed halls for Tenth of December and Fox 8.
Meanwhile, The Nix dropped from our list after two months of solid showings. If he's reading this (because who isn't?) then hopefully Nathan Hill can look to two other titles on this month's list for solace. Both The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake as well as Otessa Moshfegh's Eileen are examples of books that have graced our monthly Top Ten one month (June, in this case) only to drop out for another (July), and then reappear (August). If they can do it, so you can you, Nix fans!
The remaining two spots were filled by new novels from Laurent Binet and Victor LaValle.
The Seventh Function of Language: A Novel, which was highlighted in bothinstallments of our Great 2017 Book Preview, was expected to provide "highbrow hijinks." In her review for our site this month, Shivani Radhakrishnan confirms that it delivers in this respect. Calling Binet's novel "a madcap sharply irreverent French theory mash-up that’s part mystery and part satire," Radhakrishnan goes on to contextualize it among other works in detective fiction and theory, which, she writes, have a good deal in common and which, she writes, intertwine to great effect here:
The new book turns Roland Barthes’s accidental death in 1980 into a murder investigation set against French intellectual life. With a cast of characters that includes Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Julia Kristeva with guest appearances by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Umberto Eco, and John Searle, it’s no surprise Binet’s book is way more dizzying than most detective stories. What is shocking, though, is how it manages to respect the theories and mock the theorists all at once.
The Changeling, too, was highlighted on this site in one of our monthly mini-previews. At the time, Lydia Kiesling implored readers to check out LaValle's second novel, which she described as "a book that somehow manages to be a fairy tale, an agonizing parenting story, a wrenching metaphor for America’s foundational racist ills, and a gripping page-turner to usher in the summer." If you're still not sold, you can check out an excerpt from the book, or read our interview with the author from last year.
Skulking just beyond our list – like some expectant, lovelorn dolphin admiring a human home-wrecker as he swims – is Alissa Nutting's Made for Love, which I reviewed a month ago, and which I encourage you all to buy and read so that this sentence makes sense.
This month's other near misses included: The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story, Hillbilly Elegy, Made for Love, Enigma Variations, and The Night Ocean. See Also: Last month's list.

We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for July.
This Month
Last Month
Title
On List
1.
1.
Lincoln in the Bardo
6 months
2.
2.
A Separation
6 months
3.
3.
Ill Will
4 months
4.
4.
Men Without Women: Stories
3 months
5.
5.
American War
4 months
6.
6.
Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living
6 months
7.
-
Exit West
1 month
8.
-
What We Lose
1 month
9.
8.
The Nix
2 months
10.
-
The Idiot
1 month
Otessa Moshfegh learned Icarus's lesson this month. A few weeks ago, she boasted not one but two titles on our Top Ten list – a feat that had never before been accomplished. But come July? Nada. How quickly things change. One month, you're 1/5 of our list; the next month, one of your books has graduated to our Hall of Fame and another has dropped out of the running entirely.
Meanwhile, much of this month's list remains unchanged. The books in the first six positions didn't budge. Instead, three newcomers entered our ranks in the seventh, eighth, and tenth slots.
Mohsin Hamid's Exit West is one of those new books. "Tracing the fissures in human community and global space, and reflecting on the possibility of their transcendence," wrote Eli Jelly-Schapiro in his review for our site, the book "maps the divides that structure the current global order."
Next, in seventh position, we welcome What We Lose by Zinzi Clemmons. In our recently published Great Second-Half 2017 Book Preview, our own Claire Cameron observed that "the buzz around this debut is more like a roar," and based on the book's immediate ascendance onto our list, that seems accurate.
Finally, Elif Batuman's The Idiot fills tenth position in this month's list. To that development, Millions staffers would likely say: about time. Having earned not one, but two full-length reviews for our site, The Idiot has been lauded for the way its "layered truths and fictions...compounded so that everything in the novel became true and real in a deep, shining way that cannot be achieved through essays." (It's also been examined in the context of sexual power dynamics.)
Next month, we can expect to see at least three openings on our Top Ten, and likely considerably more as the long tail of the Book Preview does its job.
This month's other near misses included: Hillbilly Elegy, The Night Ocean, Void Star, Dunkirk: The History Behind the Motion Picture, and Blind Spot. See Also: Last month's list.